


The Taking of Iacon

by fanficlady74 (Raquel24)



Series: Rising Power [1]
Category: The Transformers (Cartoon Generation One)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-12 20:21:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7947721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raquel24/pseuds/fanficlady74
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The beginning of the war between the Decepticons who tyrannically rule the planet Cybertron and the down-but-not-out Resistance movement, the latter gaining the upper hand after inventing transformation technology.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Taking of Iacon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The planet Cybertron, 9 million years ago: Having been decimated by the iron fist of Megatron's reign of terror over Cybertron, the group of freedom fighters known until now as the Resistance is down to its last few surviving members. But they still have two reasons to hold on to hope: First, their dynamic new leader, Optimus Prime, and second, their secret new stealth technology, developed by their head scientist, Wheeljack. Its name is TRANSFORMATION.

_Nine million years ago, in a solar system different to the one which the planet Earth calls home, the sentient robots who made up the population of the planet Cybertron were finding themselves on the verge of a crisis._

Evening was falling quickly over a remote, burned-out industrial section of Cybertron, flanked by a military bunker to the right, and a large, rounded, gated device to the left. The latter was known as a transport bridge, and its teleportation functions were the most common mode of travel across large distances on the surface of the planet; there were transport bridges at various locations on Cybertron, all linked to each other and all particularly helpful when the inhabitants of the planet needed to reach the areas which were not easily accessed by conventional means. This section of Cybertron was one such area, possibly the most inaccessible on the planet.

The military bunker, currently being used for scientific research under the auspices of the elite Cybertronian leadership, hummed with mundane activity, no different than it had been every previous day since the bunker had been built. Bored out of their computerized minds, the two robots standing guard at the bunker's entrance were very pleased to see that their night-shift replacements were coming to relieve them. The replacements were also two in number, one painted blue-and-grey and going by the name Rumble, the other painted red-and-grey and known by the name Frenzy. They were both smaller in scale than the average Cybertronian, including the two rather nondescript robots they were now in the process of relieving, and whose names they had forgotten at that moment. But anyone who would dare cross Rumble & Frenzy would have found out the hard way that the punch they both packed belied their compact builds.

As it happened, crossing those two fun-sized hard cases was not only the intention of the four average-sized robots who lay in hiding behind a giant pile of dilapidated machinery, it was their mission! The biggest and most intimidating of them, painted mostly in an electric shade of blue, was now activating the radio built into the upper part of his wrist and speaking into it.

"Devcon reporting. The time has come and we're moving in. Overdrive will be taking point."

"Roger that." replied a rich, deep, and, above all, authoritative baritone crackling through the radio's tiny speaker. "Proceed with all due caution."

"Caution?" snorted Overdrive, a tall drink of liquid energy whose sleek build had been enhanced by a recently-applied coat of cherry-red paint, "I don't know the meaning of the word!"

"That's enough foolishness, Overdrive." the voice firmly admonished him through the speaker. "There's no time to lose. Get moving now. Optimus Prime over and out."

"You heard the commander," said Devcon as he pointed at the bunker, "get moving!"

With Overdrive zealously taking the point as planned, the quartet of warriors rushed at Rumble & Frenzy, all guns blazing, and none more frantically or destructively than Overdrive's state-of-the-art laser pistol. Just as the warriors had hoped, they'd managed to take the guards by surprise, and discovered to their further satisfaction that Rumble & Frenzy were not as quick on the draw as they were. Overdrive shot both guard's guns out of their hands, then paused to savor the ego-boost that his actions had given him.

That proved to be a near-fatal miscalculation, as Overdrive discovered too late when a rapidly-recovered Rumble lunged at him and hit him in the chest-plate with the potent force of a pile-driver. Overdrive went flying backwards before crashing into the pile of junk which he and his fellow warriors had been hiding behind one minute earlier. Smoke and fire billowed from behind Overdrive's chest-plate, but he was too stubborn to know when to fall back and let the others take over. At great risk to himself, he got back on his feet and began charging straight towards Rumble.

More by luck than judgment, Overdrive had given Devcon an opportunity to get the jump on Rumble, and the blue warrior seized the moment, tackling Rumble from the guard's blind spot, and sending pieces of Rumble's outer plates flying in all directions. Despite their difference in size, Devcon had, unlike Overdrive, been fully prepared for the possibility of Rumble being able to give as good as he got. Which quickly proved to be true, but Rumble had no way of knowing that Devcon loved nothing more than a challenge to his considerable might. Within a couple of minutes, Rumble appeared to have been left unconscious by Devcon's relentless pummeling assault.

Frenzy, too, had proven more than enough of a handful for not one, but two of the other warriors. Downshift, clunkier and chunkier of build than Overdrive and painted in bright white, proved unable to stand up to Frenzy's ability to disrupt the electric flow of any robot's circuitry by merely getting a good grip on his opponent's outer surface. And although Frenzy was neither as strong nor as coordinated a fighter as Rumble, the sheer manic intensity of his attack more than compensated, especially against Camshaft, the slender silver-painted warrior who was considerably less battle-seasoned than his teammates. Once again it fell to Devcon to save the day, grabbing Frenzy by the shoulder blades and ripping him off from Camshaft before he could use his disruptive powers. Without a second's hesitation, Devcon slammed Frenzy to the ground, after which the guard lay still.

"You're all pathetic!" barked Devcon at his teammates as they regrouped to enter the bunker all at the same time. "Sloppiness and softness will get you killed! And right now, I think you deserve it! Now, pick up the guards' weapons and follow my lead!"

The other warriors obeyed, with grudging degrees of resentment towards Devcon, even though they knew deep down that he was speaking some hard truths. And when they were confronted inside the bunker by a large defensive squad combining hardened troopers with canon-fodder drones, they no longer had the luxury of idle thought as they fought for their very lives.

_These Cybertronian robots had originated many years earlier as creations of the Quintessons, an industrious but ruthless and amoral race of tentacled organic beings, each possessing the same five distinctive but dissimilar faces. Cybertron itself was a wholly artificial world which also had been created by the Quintessons, as a combination planet-sized factory and strategic outpost for the Quintessons' dealings with other planets in the system -- these five-faced elites had initially concerned themselves not with starting wars or taking sides in them, but rather in profiting from them._

_So it had been that the robots assembled through cutting-edge technology on Cybertron originally served one of only two specific purposes -- half the robots were built to be workers and traded as consumer goods, the other half built to be warriors and traded as cannon fodder. But as the Quintessons' constant upgrades to their robotic products coincided with the increasing laziness and complacency of the Quintessons themselves, the fates intervened to facilitate a convergence which would forever alter the cosmos._

_For the increasingly sophisticated (in both function and artificial intelligence) robots became first self-reliant, then capable of a full range of emotions, and ultimately evolved into self-possessed sentients. Once they were aware of the concept of freedom, it was only a matter of time before the pacifistic worker robots and the hawkish warrior robots temporarily put aside their differences to join forces in an uprising against their tyrannical creators. In the end, it had been a passionate pair of Cybertronian robots -- a male known simply as A-3 who had been one of the Quintessons very first creations, and a female named Beta who had been around for an almost equally long time -- who led the final rebellious push towards the overthrow and exile of the Quintessons, the robots' creators fleeing to a far-flung corner of the galaxy and continuing their profiteering ways, while patiently awaiting the right moment to mount a campaign to reclaim Cybertron._

Against all odds, Devcon and the other three warriors had managed to get quite far within the inner workings of the bunker. Their mission was to get all the way to the main control center on the second of the bunker's three levels. The warriors never paused to recharge or to look back at the mangled robot bodies they had left in their wake, drones and troopers alike laying all over the floor of the top level, damaged beyond repair.

As the warriors came closer to the elevator doors, Devcon kept running while he drew his laser gun and blasted the elevator doors to molten metal. All four of them filed into the elevator, and each one crouched in a corner, from which they all simultaneously fired their weapons at the elevator floor, blasting a hole wide enough for them to climb through one at a time. Devcon went first, gripping the edge of the hole as he swung towards the second-level elevator doors. By the time his powerful body had made contact with the doors, they had already been softened enough by a well-timed blast from Devcon's gun so that he was able to easily burst through them, and take the robots in the second-level control center by surprise.

Devcon rolled across the floor as he barged into the center, and regained his footing with more than enough time to shoot down several of the enemy robots before they could draw their weapons. The other three warriors then followed Devcon into the lab, firing at will so that the enemy robots took hits from every direction. It was not long at all before the warriors appeared to have successfully taken over the bunker.

"You three start overriding the codes and reprogramming the computers." commanded Devcon. "I have to go make sure we took down all of the drones and troopers."

_Meanwhile, with no common ground left between them after the success of the Revolution, the relationship between the ex-worker robots and the ex-warrior robots quickly spiraled into disagreements, back-biting, mutual betrayal, and finally, a new war, this one for the dominance of Cybertron._

_What the ex-workers had not counted on was that the ex-warriors, now calling themselves Decepticons, would find one powerful figurehead to rally around, one as vicious and uncompromising as he was charismatic. His name was Megatron, and under his leadership, the Decepticons began their brutal campaign for absolute dominance over the planet. They never hesitated to publicly make examples of any Cybertronians who refused to comply with their new world order. Amid the overreliance on Cybertron's vast yet not unlimited energy resources, with an extremely unequal share favoring the Decepticons, mass murder became so commonplace that the most recent generation of civilian robots could never recall a time when such extreme measures were the exception rather than the rule._

_Naturally, the Decepticons' barbaric policies precipitated a series of attempts by principled civilians to take a stand against their self-appointed rulers, even resorting to violence whenever it was felt necessary. Unfortunately, the lack of a consensus within what had come to be termed the Resistance -- with the more diplomatic members and the more warlike members constantly at each others' throats -- appeared to have doomed it to failure._

Calmly and coolly surveying the enemy's battle casualties, Devcon slowly began to relax -- which was not a feeling that came easy to him -- as it became apparent that there had been neither survivors nor stragglers within the bunker. Despite what Devcon regarded as Overdrive's idiotic overconfidence and Camshaft's possibly suicidal tendency to hold back, the mission appeared to have ultimately been a success. All he had left to do now was check the bunker's entrance, and drag in the bodies of the two guards who had already been disarmed after the warriors left them unconscious, or possibly non-functional -- Devcon certainly hoped for the latter, but if it was the former, he could easily take care of that loose end with two well-aimed gunshots to the guards' heads.

Unfortunately for Devcon, he exited the bunker to discover that both of the guards were gone. With their escape, they had proven themselves even more resilient than the warriors had realized. With a raging roar, Devcon drew his gun and began searching for any sign of which direction they might have gone in. Suddenly, it all became clear to him, and he cursed himself for not thinking of it sooner -- they must have headed for the nearest transport bridge, as even the lowliest of military personnel on Cybertron had been given the activation code for the bridges, for just such emergencies as this.

Devcon ran as fast as he could towards the location of the transport bridge, but it was all in vain. He reached the bridge just as Rumble & Frenzy stood behind the rapidly closing gate, ready to be teleported to safety. With a blinding flash, a colossal beam of light shot out of the middle of the bridge and into the sky, opening a temporary vortex through which Rumble & Frenzy were picked up and carried away by a swirling storm of teleportational energy. The bright spectacle faded as quickly as it had started, leaving Devcon angrily shaking his fist at the sky and growling curses at his all-too-lucky pair of enemies and the elites they worked for.

After a few minutes, Devcon had managed to calm himself down, and with a huff of resignation, he activated his built-in radio once again. "Devcon reporting." he grumbled. "The good news is that the bunker is all ours. The bad news is that two of our enemies got away through a nearby transport bridge. I was almost able to stop them, but..."

"Don't beat yourself up about it, Devcon." was the reassuring reply from Optimus Prime which came through Devcon's radio speaker. "If we of the Resistance didn't always count our blessings and always forgive ourselves our missteps, then we wouldn't have survived as long as we've been able to. My orders are for you and the other three to stay on alert as you continue to get the bunker back in order, and as the rest of us near the end of our pilgrimage to your location. We estimate our arrival to be within the next ten hours. Optimus Prime over and out." 

_Then, one day seemingly like any other, Megatron made a crucial error when he himself delivered the killing shots towards a group of rebellious (though not Resistance-affiliated) workers at an energy plant located near the planet's capital city of Iacon. Among the workers who had been near-fatally damaged by Megatron were Orion Pax, his girlfriend Ariel, and his best friend Dion. And what Cybertron's increasingly complacent lead tyrant had remained subsequently ignorant of was that a group of mysterious strangers visiting Iacon, having failed to prevent Megatron's massacre of the workers, had sped the barely-functional bodies of Orion, Ariel, and Dion to none other than A-3 himself, who had spent recent years laying low while secretly helping the Resistance as much as he could without being discovered and de-activated himself._

_Sensing something special within all three of the workers victimized by Megatron, A-3 courageously seized the initiative, and rebuilt them into powerful new warrior forms which he felt might finally make a positive difference within the Resistance, and bring the bickering factions together in unity against the Decepticons. They immediately renamed themselves to reflect the fact that they were no longer the naïve, if principled, innocents who had nearly been reduced to mere statistics by Megatron. Orion Pax now became Optimus Prime, an authoritative commander and inspiring speaker; Ariel now became Elita-One, as charismatic a figurehead as Megatron and twice as dangerous; Dion now became Prowl, a taciturn master strategist with one of the fastest minds ever possessed by a Cybertronian._

_Just as A-3 had hoped, the new warriors did succeed -- in surprisingly little time -- at uniting the Resistance into a focused militia of freedom fighters, determined to bring down the Decepticons and restore Cybertron to the peace and harmony which the planet had known all-too-briefly in the immediate aftermath of the Quintessons' departure, a time which had retroactively become regarded as The Golden Age of Cybertron._

_Not that everything had gone smoothly for the Resistance from that point on -- quite the contrary, for it did not take Megatron and the main advisors among his fellow elites to realize that the same Resistance which they had once dismissed with a cruel chuckle had now become a genuine threat to their rule over Cybertron. And the Decepticons would not go down without a fight. With ice-cold efficiency, most of the Resistance cells on the planet had been flushed out one by one, until there remained little more than a handful of surviving dissidents. Besides commander Optimus Prime, first lieutenant Elita-One, and chief strategist Prowl, the Resistance as it now stood consisted of a bare-bones setup: Senior advisors A-3 and Beta; chief scientist Wheeljack; chief medic Ratchet; head of security Red Alert; rescue operation specialist Inferno; and finally, four field operatives -- Devcon, Overdrive, Downshift, and Camshaft -- who formed a motley crew, each individual possessed of a radically different outlook than the others, and yet they could always be relied on for no-nonsense teamwork whenever the situation demanded it._

And so it was that this remote outpost, until recently occupied by the Cybertronian military, had now become no less than the new headquarters for the Resistance. Optimus Prime, Elita-One, Prowl, A-3, Beta, and the handful of other surviving freedom fighters duly arrived at almost exactly the time which Optimus had predicted. By then, the four-robot team had cleaned away the debris, repaired most of the damage which they themselves had caused, and managed to override a reasonable amount of the Decepticons' original programming of the bunker's computer systems. The last of these tasks had been the most difficult, and they were more than happy to hand over the completion of the task to the Resistance's expert in such matters, Red Alert.

Cackling gleefully as his fingers became a blur by racing in many different directions over the main computer terminal's keyboard, Red Alert finished overriding the bunker's original programming within mere minutes of having seated himself. Rubbing together his hands in self-satisfaction, Red Alert detected, through the corner of his optical sensors, an imposing presence at his left side. Even before he had turned his head to look, he had already sensed that it had to be the Resistance's stalwart leader, Optimus Prime. "Good work, Red." declared Optimus to an extremely pleased Red Alert before adding, "Now the only remaining task at hand is to break the code on the nearby transport bridge. Once we control that bridge, it will be the key factor in Prowl's master plan, which will bring about our overthrow of the Decepticons and the liberation of Cybertron." Red Alert's borderline cocky reply was an ebullient, "No sweat, Optimus!"

"Glad to hear that." said Optimus as he began to walk towards the recently repaired elevator. "Now, if you'll join the rest of us on the top level, you just may be lucky enough to witness a miracle."

"It would be a miracle if Wheeljack's invention actually worked." was Red Alert's acerbic reply. "What makes you think that this project of his will be any more successful than his earlier ones?"

"In a word, Red...faith." responded Optimus calmly.

Optimus Prime and Red Alert entered the top level to find a cheerful Wheeljack closing Overdrive's chest plate, having finished installing inside of him what promised to be a ground-breaking new program which the Resistance knew was sure to turn the tide of war in their favor...but only if it actually worked.

"All set, Optimus." said Wheeljack, "Prepare to have Overdrive amaze you."

"I'm amazing enough to begin with." quipped Overdrive as he lifted himself off the slab in the middle of the room and stood tall and perhaps a little too proud.

"Get to it." an unruffled Optimus commanded firmly.

Overdrive obeyed by walking outside the bunker, with the other members of the Resistance following close behind. He came to a stop, and after a few seconds of standing still, Overdrive's entire body began to literally change shape. As the conversion took place, it was accompanied by a loud noise, which combined the sound of his grinding inner mechanisms readjusting themselves in a way they'd never had to before with the sound of energy being discharged as the liquid energy which fueled all Cybertronian robots (referred to colloquially as Energon) relocated its flow through Overdrive's body.

Only a few seconds had passed, and the conversion was already complete. Where a once-recognizable Overdrive had once stood, there was now a super-sleek vehicle designed for cruising on land. This new technology which Wheeljack had invented was now in the process of defying and exceeding all expectations. There remained only one more test before it could be pronounced an unqualified success. "Overdrive," ordered Optimus as he pointed straight ahead, "ROLL FOR IT!"

The cacophonous revving of Overdrive's engines echoed throughout the otherwise dreary environs, nearly overloading the audio sensors belonging to each of the other Resistance members. Finally, Overdrive put himself in third gear and bolted away, his tires screeching and leaving skid-marks as he covered a considerable distance in mere seconds. The other members temporarily lost sight of him, but before long, they were relieved to see him speeding back towards them, retracing the same path he had taken. Overdrive parked his vehicle mode in the exact same spot from which he had taken off. He shut down his engine, and then, after a few tense seconds where nothing seemed to be happening, Overdrive reshaped his own body back into his robot mode.

"That," declared Overdrive effusively, "was INCREDIBLE! Now I really AM more amazing than I was before! Thanks, Wheeljack."

"Yes, indeed," said Optimus warmly, "I think I speak for all of us when I say the entire Resistance is grateful to you, Wheeljack. Well done, very well done."

"Just doing my job." replied Wheeljack self-deprecatingly. "And you wanna hear the name I've coined for this new ability which we're all gonna have soon?"

"Affirmative." responded Optimus.

"I call it..." Wheeljack began before making a calculatedly dramatic pause, "...TRANSFORMATION!!"

"That's all very well, and it certainly flows out of the vocalizing device," said Optimus, "but I call it...a miracle!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The episode "War Dawn" established the end of the Golden Age of Cybertron and the beginning of the Autobot-Decepticon War, as taking place nine million years ago.
> 
> Devices referred to in this story as transport bridges were known in the cartoon series as "space bridges," which were built on Earth to work along the same basic function as described here. The first canon appearance of a bridge was in the episode "Transport to Oblivion."
> 
> Rumble's first canon appearance was in the 3-part pilot episode, retroactively titled "More Than Meets the Eye."
> 
> Frenzy's first canon appearance was in the episode "Countdown to Extinction."
> 
> Devcon's first and only canon appearance was in the episode "The Gambler," which takes place entirely in the present day, and where it is established that Devcon is an Autobot, albeit a mysterious sort of Ronin who calls no place home and usually works alone. It could safely be assumed that he has previously had many undocumented adventures, and at the end of the episode he is clearly headed for further adventures.
> 
> Overdrive, Downshift, and Camshaft, their toys collectively known as the Omnibots, never made any canon appearances, and their toys were never available in stores. Instead, the toys were special mail-order items.
> 
> The Quintessons' first canon appearance was in "Transformers: The Movie" (1986.) They were revealed to be the Transformers' creators in the extended Transformers origin sequence seen in the episode "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 4." The episode "The Quintesson Journal" established them as having been war profiteers for a long time.
> 
> The overthrow and exile of the Quintessons was first mentioned in the episode "The Five Faces of Darkness, Part 4," and elaborated upon in the episode "Forever is a Long Time Coming," which was also the first and only canon appearance of Beta.
> 
> Megatron made his first canon appearance in "More Than Meets the Eye," and was confirmed as already leading the Decepticons nine million years ago in "War Dawn."
> 
> Orion Pax and Ariel were rebuilt by A-3 (later Alpha Trion) into Optimus Prime and Elita One after they were near-fatally damaged by Megatron, as seen in "War Dawn," which confirmed the hints dropped in the earlier episode "The Search for Alpha Trion," where both Alpha Trion and Elita One made their first canon appearances.
> 
> Another of Megatron's victims from "War Dawn," Orion's friend Dion, does not have a new rebuilt identity which is considered canon. Theories within fandom have ranged from Ultra Magnus to Prowl to Ironhide. I settled on Prowl, partly because he was so underused in the cartoon series; he made his first canon appearance in "More Than Meets the Eye."
> 
> Orion, Ariel, and Dion's mysterious rescuers were the Aerialbots, 20th Century Autobots who had been forcibly sent back in time through Decepticon technology and treachery, from 1985 to 9 million years earlier in "War Dawn." Once they had done their part in ensuring the creation of Cybertron's saviors, the Aerialbots were whisked back to 1985 by their fellow Autobots, who now controlled the Decepticons' time machine.
> 
> Wheeljack and Ratchet made their first canon appearances in "More Than Meets the Eye."
> 
> Inferno and Red Alert did not make their first canon appearances until the series' 2nd season, in "Dinobot Island," but I decided their designations were too important for them not to have been Autobots early on.
> 
> Transformation technology was confirmed to have been invented by the Autobots in "Five Faces of Darkness, Part 4."


End file.
